


Darkness - Sean's Story

by Rakshi



Series: New Dawn [2]
Category: Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-22
Updated: 2011-11-22
Packaged: 2017-10-26 10:32:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/282033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rakshi/pseuds/Rakshi





	Darkness - Sean's Story

Darkness . . .

It doesn't mean much  
it doesn't mean anything at all  
the life I've left behind me  
is a cold room

I've crossed the last line  
from where I can't return  
where every step I took in faith betrayed me  
and led me from my home

And sweet  
sweet surrender  
is all that I have to give

Sweet Surrender - Sarah McLachlan

Sean clutched the steering wheel with a sense of relief that damn near overwhelmed him. Pressing hard on the accelerator he heard the car’s engine respond with a pleasing 'mmmmmhhhh'. He skillfully eased his way through traffic, loving the way the car responded to his touch.

"God, I love driving!" Sean thought.

Music blaring. Not even sure what it was. Some goofy thing of Elijah’s. Just loud. Loud enough that clear thinking became difficult. "Good. I like that. Can’t think clear anyway, so it works just fine."

Where was he going? Fading sunset on his left. He must be headed north. "I have no direction." Sean thought. So go "North. Good. Why not? I don't much give a damn."

Why was he going? There’s a good question. Escape? Nah. Too simple. He’d been escaping for years. Was a Master at it. On with the headset. Buried in a book. Mindless channel flipping. Sleep too damn much. He’d come out of the shell for Ally. But she went to bed early and his need to not-be-there didn’t flow from her.

A sign caught his eye: Malibu 15 miles.

"OK". Sean thought. "Malibu. Now I’m getting somewhere." He laughed out loud. "Right, Astin. Sure you are. "

He suddenly yearned for the other Hobbits. If they were here this ride would be fun. Teasing. Laughter. Brotherhood. He wouldn’t be alone. But if they were here he wouldn’t be escaping, would he. And if they were here, he’d be here.

Elijah.

Sean sighed and pushed the button that changed CD’s. Fleetwood Mac. Good. After a moment he heard Lindsay Buckingham’s primal wail:

I’ve been alone  
all the years  
so many ways to count the tears  
I never change  
I never will  
I'm so afraid of the way I feel

Sean leaned his head back and rolled his eyes toward heaven. “Just what I need." He moaned. "Irony from fucking Fleetwood Mac.”

He thought about tonight. Lots of commotion but no resolution. One-sided conversations don't bring resolution. Never a real question so how could there be a real answer? Statements of fact shoved in his general direction. If he happened to be standing there when something happened, he'd done it. Or she'd accuse him of having done it just to get a response.

"And my response?" Sean questioned himself? "A shrug, a blank look, and silence. What the hell did Chris expect? I used to reassure. I used to argue. What's the point? I know it all by heart now, and it never changes. None of this was new. I could have handled this. If it had ended there, I wouldn't have left. But it didn't end there."

"Accusations, I can handle. " Sean thought. "Attacks, I can handle. I know the truth of it, so what is there to argue about? But ultimatums are a different matter. Especially THAT ultimatum."

"Ah, screw it!" Sean said. But he'd opened it up now. The scene grew vivid in his mind. 'I'm making a fool of myself over a foul-mouthed little boy-toy,' he thought, biting his lip at the memory. 'God, but she does love calling him names. Must be the look on my face. But tonight it got worse. Tonight she said she wouldn't permit him to be part of our lives anymore. Ignore him in public. No seeing him in private. No phone calls. No nothing. Ultimatum, pure and simple. Take it or leave it.'

"So I left it." Sean said out loud. 'God knows I don't blame her,' he thought again. 'I'd probably feel the same way. But... it's not going to happen. I can't let him go.'

Reliving the conversation left him feeling shaken and depressed. He tried to focus on the road. That would help. He knew that would help.

Traffic was light and it was full dark outside his window. He saw the lights of Malibu approaching. "Jeez! " he thought, surprised. "That was a fast 15 miles."

"I have more issues than a magazines store.” Sean said mockingly.

A failing marriage. A failing life. A failing belief that anything he once believed to be true held even a scrap of validity. Seen so much chaos in his life that he wouldn’t allow anything into his field of vision that wasn’t totally explainable. Dudley Do-right walking the narrow path. Safer that way. Kept it all controllable.

He’d seen ‘out of control’. He didn’t like it. A childhood that occasionally bore a fuzzy resemblance to a scene from ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ had given him plenty of opportunity to see ’out of control’. He had scars from ‘out of control’.

He believed in keeping his life tightly wrapped. Or he had. The emptiness and anguished yearning that being tightly wrapped created within his soul could be dismissed or outright buried as long as he had ‘predictable’ going for him. Sean sighed. "Predictable was safe."

Predictable. Right. Then came Lord of the Rings. Then came Elijah.

The Pacific Coast Highway stretched before him. A sign for Cameron Park caught the corner of his eye.

Elijah.

The Mac kept singing:

Break the silence  
Damn the dark  
Damn the light

And if  
You don't love me now  
You will never love me again  
I can still hear you saying  
You would never break the chain.

 

“Shit!” Sean said miserably. “OK!” he said, as if addressing another entity. Another part of him. “I’ll think about Elijah.”

Images flashed, the most recent only a few hours old. Elijah, hands in pockets and eyes downcast. Sean, saying what he’d said so many, many times in the past: “I gotta go.” And hearing the not-quite break in Elijah’s voice when he said very softly: “OK. Sean? Take care.”

How many times had Elijah heard those words? In New Zealand. Here. Not as often here because they didn’t see each other as much. Another issue.

Had he ever once said anything except a soft “OK”? No. Not once. Not ever. Sean knew there were things he wanted to say. Was probably dying to say. But he never did. And Sean silently blessed him for it every single time. A debt of gratitude he didn’t dare even acknowledge. Gratitude for a gift that had probably kept him sane. Elijah's sad eyes. Elijah's silence.

Because if he ever did say what was in his mind and heart, if he ever once touched Sean’s fingers and said: “Don’t leave me . . .”

Sean let the thought drift and go nowhere.

God knows he has the right to say it. That night in New Zealand had given him the right. But if Elijah believed he had rights where Sean was concerned, it was a belief he never voiced. The months since then had been tough. Sean had a pregnant wife. Leaving was out of the question no matter how bad things got. That one night . . . couldn't be repeated.

"Elijah understands." Sean thought, and instantly hated himself. "What a stupid fucking thing to think!" Sean mumbled to himself. "Elijah believes what I tell him! Be honest! You've sacrificed both of you. And for what?"

"God, how did it get like this? When did it start?" Sean asked himself. He answered himself in the next breath: "The day we met."

Sean sighed. To think of it left him feeling sad. Achingly sad. Cry my eyes out sad. Sad beyond tears. And the funny thing was, it wasn’t really a sad moment.

Ventura: 25 miles. Still headed north. Highway 1 leading him north. Toward . . . what?

Sean didn’t know him then. Knew who he was, of course, but Sean had no idea what to expect when he accidentally met his co-star in a hotel lobby. Probably a good thing, because he had no time to even take a breath when he was thunderstruck by a human projectile that wrapped itself around him in a huge, smothering hug.

Elijah.

Eyeing the road, Sean smiled in spite of himself. Made him want to laugh and cry at the same time.

‘Hi.” Elijah had said softly, battening huge blue eyes on Sean’s face. Sean shifted Elijah’s weight to keep those amazing eyes in view. He felt no inclination what-so-ever to put him down. ‘Hi yourself, Frodo Baggins.” he replied just as softly. Inside him, though, Sean was saying something else entirely.

"Oh my, fucking, god! What is this?"

Elijah started to let go and slipped a bit. Sean caught him up again before he could slide down, astounded by the overpowering desire to protect that welled up inside him. They were still looking into each other’s eyes.

Then he was gone. Flown like some wild thing unfettered by the physical world, and Sean’s arms felt suddenly horribly empty. He’d held Elijah lots of times since then. Quick hugs. Longer embraces. No matter. When he pulled away, Sean’s arms always felt empty. Or was it his heart? Empty. "I knew then." Sean thought. "At that moment . . . I knew."

"So." Sean said out loud. "OK. I love him. That doesn't have to mean anything bad."

It was hard to relate the word 'bad' to how he felt about Elijah, but he knew what 'bad' was. Bad was what he felt when the arguments got more outraged and the words became more heated. Beyond outraged. Debased.

He realized that even driving all alone in his car in the middle of the night, miles from anyone that knew or cared, he could still not repeat what she'd called him. And that pissed him off.

"Gay!" Sean spat out. "She called me gay. Elijah too. It's her new favorite word."

Sean pounded the steering wheel hard. "God, I hate it!" he said angrily. "Do I deserve that? Does Elijah?" But there had been that one night. That one night.

The car veered and Sean quickly brought it back under control. He stabbed at the CD button again and relaxed a bit when the music became softer. More haunting.

"Who is that?" Sean wondered, leaning toward the words. And then, like light breaking thsrough darkness, he heard them clearly.

So tired of the straight line  
and everywhere you turn  
there's vultures and thieves at your back  
and the storm keeps on twisting  
you keep on building the lie  
that you make up for all that you lack . . .

Sean listened, transfixed. "So tired of the straight line." he murmured sadly.

You are pulled from the wreckage  
of your silent reverie  
you're in the arms of the angel  
may you find some comfort there

Suddenly he felt sad and drained. He glanced at his watch. 10:24 PM. "Time for some coffee."

Spotting a gas station, he pulled in and bought a huge coffee. Returning to the car he sat on the hood, sipping. Somewhere off in the dark, he could hear the ocean. The music and hurtful memories combined with the sound of the unseen waves and left him feeling miserable. He felt so lonely for Elijah. Thought how much he would have loved it. To be on this drive with Sean.

"If he thought I needed silence, he wouldn't have said a word." Sean thought. "He just would have been happy to be with me."

He thought of his cell phone, turned off, but in the car. But calling Elijah now solved nothing. "What would I say?" Sean thought. "Running away from home . . . wish you were here?"

"No," he thought stubbornly. "Before I talk to anyone I'm going to resolve some things inside me." But he felt suddenly lost on this journey to an unknown destination. Suddenly in need of a rock to cling to.

"Dom." Sean thought suddenly, diving into the car for his phone.

Turning it on, he saw he had messages. "Uh oh."

Dial voicemail and listen with clenched teeth. "Jesus!" Sean thought. "Eighteen minutes without taking a breath and not one nice word. It's absolutely Ripley's."

He sighed, exasperated with himself. "Why did I call voicemail? I knew what I'd hear." After a second he answered his own question aloud: "Because it's the right thing to do."

"AAARRRUUGGHH!" Sean growled at the sky in frustration. He punched in Dom's number and bounced on his heels while the phone rang. "Be home." Sean muttered impatiently. 'Be there, Dommie." God, he needed a voice in his head other than the one he'd been hearing.

"Ha Loooo?" Dom answered. Sean felt weak with relief at the sound.

"Dom? Dom! It's me. It's Sean. I need to talk to you, man."

"Sean! Hey, mate! What's up? And more importantly, where the fuck are you?"

"Not much up." Sean answered. "And as for where . . . uh", he looked down the road. "About half way to Frisco I guess. Maybe not that far. Headed up Highway 1."

"Yeah?" Dom said. "Well, I have a news flash for you. You've missed a few mini-dramas while you've been on your little jaunt."

Sean felt his stomach flip and leaned on the car. This was going to be bad. "Fuck. What happened?"

"Well," Dom said quietly 'your better half called here earlier and she was ballistic to say the least. She whipped on Elijah awhile. Got him pretty upset."

"Ah, shit." Sean said in a weary voice. "Is he there? Is he OK?"

"He's fine. He's worried about you, but he was up half the night last night and just now fell asleep. You want me to wake him? He'd probably want me to."

"No!" Sean said adamantly. 'No. God. Let him sleep."

Sean heard his teeth grinding, shocked by how angry he felt. "Damn!"

"Yeah." Dom replied softly. "He didn't know what to say. He just kept trying to find out where you were but she wouldn't tell him anything except what a fuck he was."

"Look." Sean said raggedly. "When he wakes up, tell him I called. Tell him I'm fine and just going for a ride to clear my head. Tell him my cell phone will be off, but I'll call him later."

"OK. I will." Dom promised. "But, Sean, why not come here? We'll take care of you. I don't like the idea of you out driving when you're upset like this."

"Can't do it, buddy." Sean said softly. "And Dom? Take care of him. Please."

"Shit!" Sean felt himself dissolving. "Gotta go." he mumbled to Dom and quickly hung up.

Sean stared at the phone blankly. "This fucking day just keeps getting better and better." He shook off the tears and tried to retrace the steps back to angry. That seemed safer at the moment.

"Drive." He told himself. "Just fucking drive. Get into something you CAN control."

Tearing down the road once again, he felt his heart lift a little. Driving at night was the best, Sean decided. Especially when, like now, he had no clue where he was going. Everything blended in the dark. Nothing was distinct. Tougher to feel afraid of what you can't see.

He focused on the music, and tried to let his mind drift for awhile. It was hard not to think about how bad Elijah must have felt though. Still. He was asleep now. And Dom was nearby. "I'll make it up to him." Sean thought. "I can't turn back now, not even for him. I have to keep going."

He watched the road disappear under his wheels. Alert now, he wasn't worried about falling asleep. His mind drifted in reverie. Like the unseen waves, his mind moved effortlessly, breaking around the memories in his life. Wondering how they had made him the person he was. Wondering how they'd help form him into the person he was becoming.

The hours and miles went by, and with each one Sean felt more able to cope. More able to honestly face the uncertainty that had been haunting him. He stopped a couple more times for coffee and a bite to eat.

Now it was going on 6:00 AM. He felt tired and edgy, but, surprisingly, good. He wondered, absently, if Elijah was awake and decided he probably wasn't.

Road signs said that San Francisco wasn't far off and traffic had picked up enough to assure him that he was getting close. He didn't want the city though. There was somewhere else he needed to go. He knew the sun would be up soon, and he wanted to reach his goal before that happened.

On the north side of the city he began to see the signs. He crossed the bay and within a half-hour was turning down a narrow auto road leading to the East Peak. Tamalpias. Light was just beginning to show when Sean parked the car.

He slowly walked to some rocks below the weather observation tower and perched there to watch the sun come up.

He was alone in the gathering light, and the view was spectacular. The entire San Francisco Bay area was spread out at his feet. Lights twinkled in the city and the East bay hills were glorious.

Looking North, Sean saw the lakes and hills glowing softly. He sighed and stared into the distance.

The spatial openness surrounding him seemed to stand in opposition to the rest of Sean's life.

The things he'd always labeled right, good, and this-is-where-you're-supposed-to-be were in a place that was slowly killing his spirit. And the things that he'd always labeled bad, wrong, and Sean-don't-fucking-go-there were in a place where he felt needed and deeply loved. Where he felt cherished.

He'd tried desperately to jam Elijah into one of the compartments labeled convenient and safe, but it simply wouldn't work. Sean smiled. "Lijah refused to go. No easy way out with him. It is what it is. Never a word. Just those sad eyes."

"Am I gay?" Sean questioned suddenly. Frightened, he considered this for a moment. "I'd say no if it weren't for Elijah." he thought. "But does it really matter? This isn't about my fucking image. I love him. I don't want him hurt anymore."

"Jesus." He said, shaking his head. "It's all just too goddamn confusing. I don't know how to figure its out."

Glancing up, he saw hawks gliding on the rising thermals. The sight of them, of their freedom and ease in the high air, nearly broke his heart. He dropped his face into his hands and cried. It was all so beautiful. And he felt so lonely.

He remembered something Ian had said: "If someone hung a sign around your neck that said 'Oak tree' would you feel obligated to grow bark and sprout leaves? Or worse . . . feel bad if you couldn't?" Obligated, Sean thought.

"I'm done with labels. I'm done trying to figure it out." he said aloud, wiping his face.

"The only resolution I'm going to take from here is that there isn't any resolution. There's just being willing to question how it's always been. For me, that's major. And there's one other thing I know for sure. If I have to give Elijah up in order to be labeled 'straight', I'm not interested. I'll take 'gay' and be glad to have it."

Rising, he sprinted for the car and flipped on the cell phone. In a few short seconds he heard an anxious voice. "Sean? Please say it's you."

"It's me, you lucky thing." Sean said softly. "Whatcha doing? You behaving?"

"Where are you?" Elijah demanded. "We've been worried about you! I've been worried about you! Are you OK?"

"I'm in an absolutely gorgeous place. Gonna bring you here. And, yep. I'm OK."

"Please tell me you're coming home soon."

"Yep. Coming home soon."

Silence. Then . . . "Did you find what you were looking for?" Elijah asked softly.

"God," Sean thought. "He just never fails to fucking amaze me."

"No." Sean said just as softly. "But I found what I needed to find for now. The rest'll keep."

Silence at the other end.

"Lijah?" Sean asked, smiling up at hawks spiraling against blue sky. "Are you biting your lip?"

"Very fucking funny!" Elijah responded. "And yeah. I was. Smart-ass. Sean, please come home."

"I'm gonna grab a quick nap, then I'm on my way." Sean told him. "Just wanted to tell you I love you."

Sean kept the phone to his ear long enough to hear Elijah catch his breath then he hung up and climbed back into the car.

"On my way."

Take me past this lonely truth and let me go beyond my skin  
The walls that held me here before have no purpose anymore, let me enter in  
Break me from my injured past and make me over in your arms  
The pain that guided me before has no comfort anymore, let me enter in

I leave a life behind me, I feel myself begin  
I'm reaching out to keep you, falling farther in  
I feel the light inside me, you go beyond my skin  
I'm reaching out to keep you, falling farther in

Wake me with your dark embrace and make me open in your arms  
I want to lose myself within, leave the person I have been, let me enter in

October Project - Falling Further In.


End file.
